By Absence
by Lady Anthea
Summary: Of feelings intensified by absence and by the nullification of it. Post TRF, sequel to Come With Me.


**A/N:** This story was originally posted under the name of _Three Knocks On The Door_. However, I did try to do some minor changes and ended adding more than a thousand words to it, therefore I'm posting this as a new story and deleting the old version.

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><p>The polished leather of a pair of black stilettos shone in abandonment from top of white linoleum shortly after she turned on the lights of her flat. Her newest end in the service providing chain wasn't one she would ever get used to—receiving orders and promptly, <em>dutifully<em> complying was several magnitudes different from wielding a whip against tender flesh and being adored for it: no matter the place of the world customers were from, or what proclivities they were prone to, every single shift in the hotel where she laboured was insufferably long in its predictable, dull routine.

Therefore, Irene needed a drink most urgently.

Not that she had redirected her initial efforts of playing the role of an Argentinean woman who'd fallen in love with a Mexican beach into becoming an alcoholic—how utterly commonplace for those whose lives weren't what they once knew. But it wasn't as if her excuse to disengage from a reality in which she didn't fit at all was much better either. She had wondered—and realised all at once—one night, elegantly perched in a bar stool of a crowded club, if that was why a man of the mental acuity of Sherlock Holmes had turned, at some point during his life, into drugs. For all she knew, she was able to pursue and find enjoyment in baser activities, and hadn't stopped to use her sexuality as a mean to fulfil all her kinds of needs, but her predilection of intellectual bonding over a physical connection had been forced to disappear, for the sake of her new disguise, and her own rejection to her true nature had only managed to seclude her even more from the world she belonged now.

The first glass of whiskey vanished into her mouth in one long, thirsty swallow, with her standing in the middle of a mostly dark sitting room. Yet, even though the copper liquid was hot against her throat and she scrunched her face inelegantly at the scorching burn, she barely allowed herself to settle before serving another drink.

What would he say of her self-portrait now.

Her body had only begun to thrum with a warm, buzzing feeling as she casted a glance in the direction of the, mostly empty, bookshelves. She had deemed her former love for non-fictional literature as incompatible with the persona she was cultivating; therefore the only occupant of any importance of the bookshelves was the one laptop she'd bought weeks on her arrival to the seaside town. It had become her only source of genuine satisfaction, as she had first and sparely used the device to keep track of the adventures of a man whose life she could never be a part of anymore.

Then again, it had also become the source of her sorrow, six months ago, as she had read what now the last entry in John Watson's blog was.

_16th June_

_Untitled_

_He was my best friend and I'll always believe in him._

Discovering Sherlock had committed suicide hadn't been her idea of fun, and she had permitted herself to cry, if only for a night, in which her mind kept replaying the tender, almost reverent touch of his hands, the feel of his mouth brushing across her skin—the look of imminent, overwhelming longing trying to hide behind the golden flecks in his eyes as he'd said his farewell to her.

The eleven words of the then three weeks old blog entry were all it had been needed to reduce fantasies of forbidden rendezvous into a pile of ashes and dust. She had dared herself to hope, to pretend the last of their unique devotion to each other wouldn't be held inside the walls of her new flat—stupidly childish for a person that had earned _The Woman_ simultaneously as a title and a name. Those were all illusions, for she knew the sight of his retreating back would be the last of him she would see in the flesh, but she had never expected the news of his death to reach her in such a shocking fashion.

Irene hadn't slept at all that first night, but by the end of it, dawn breaking through molasses into her bedroom, her resolve had been firm and irrefutable: she was to leave that town behind her, a place that was doomed to be surrounded in memories and what if's, and start over somewhere else.

She had hastily packed the most elemental of her belongings, and was in fact texting one of her fellow co-workers en route to the airport with the excuse of a stomach bug to delay the impending search for her, as the most ridiculously hope inducing thought crossed her mind: while the night before her heart had been pulled out of her chest in bitter remembrance of the texts she had sent him during the past weeks, she had failed to remember the ever present notification whenever they had been successfully delivered.

In the remaining minutes that separated her from a plane to Mexico City, she had forced herself to think thoroughly of the possibilities. Someone—most likely methodical and pragmatic Mycroft—would have been obliged to take care of inane unfinished business. If Sherlock's mobile plan had been cancelled, then anyone else in London could've ended up with the same digit combination as him in a brand-new mobile, meaning some stranger had been receiving texts that they weren't meant to see.

Though initially disgusted by that notion, having her private connection to Sherlock Holmes violated by a third, unknowing party, and even despite the aforementioned stranger could've been ignoring said texts, the larger part of her brain, oddly dominated by the irrational flicker of hope, insisted that, out of politeness, most people would have informed of her wrong doing before taking a harsher course of action like blocking her number. After all—and even when in particularly lonesome moments she had considered sending him the rather explicit version of the thoughts that included him—she had made sure to keep her texts light and casual, away from anything that could be classified as desperate or harassing.

If that wasn't the case, though, and Sherlock's number had been purposely maintained active, there were yet another two possible outcomes. The phone could have been kept as a memento, and though she imagined Sherlock would be horrified to know someone would display such sentimentalism even in lieu of his death, there were two people in the whole of London that could be charged guilty of this crime. She had assessed John Watson as a man that would dance along the dangerous line of self denial, and if in custody of the device he was the sort that would charge its battery while waiting for its owner to attend to it, though it was likely that he'd end up reading the texts, having acted as Sherlock's unaware PA for so long. Still, her identity had been made more than evident because of her chosen words—_let's have dinner_ was a recurring motive—and though she imagined he would've been resentful over the events that preceded her downfall, she also had thought him as the kind of man that would have eventually informed her of his friend's demise. As for the other person, whose simple consideration had sent a shiver down her spine... well, she was at least certain that if Mycroft Holmes were the one who had the mobile in his possession, she wouldn't even be alive to think of it.

Which had led her to the last possibility, the one she concluded upon and her treacherous mind wanted to believe most ardently: Sherlock Holmes was still alive.

On that regard, she had finally redirected the cabbie back to her house, her body burning with a fiery mixture of determination and mischief—_if_ (since) he was alive, it was incredibly rude of him not to let her into the deception, and a woman with the inclination for misbehaving such as she wasn't one to allow a like-mind to have all the fun (whatever the word implied for a dead Sherlock Holmes, that was).

At that, she had walked into the small flat not with the rushed rustle of feet of one Marina Bonzi, hotel receptionist and gardening hobbyist, but with the calculated cadence of Irene Adler, dominatrix and The Woman, then grabbed the forgotten laptop and set herself into the mission of locating a _supposedly_ deceased detective.

It had taken her nearly a month, but she had managed to obtain the barest hint of evidence pointing towards someone taking down what was left of Moriarty's empire. Most of her few mutual acquaintances with Jim had been accused of multiple, major crimes, and the remaining ones had been either reported missing or declared dead. There wasn't anything tangible connecting one thing to the other, but she had just _known_, perceived an elegance to this task that required skills only one man in the world possessed; in spite of the tragic measures, he had survived and thrived, becoming the predator in a game that had formerly designed him as the prey, and she couldn't help but feel a strange pang of pride over his work.

That had been five months prior, nonetheless, and as she looked now at the laptop, Irene found herself overwhelmed with the idea that, in several days—_almost two_ _weeks_, her darker side provided—she'd been unable to come across the slightest indication of his continued existence, and a fourth glass of liquor was required to calm the impending anxiety that suddenly ate at her. She had yet to find a strong albeit minimal pattern, anything that could point her in the direction of him to join the potentially lethal assignment, and the notion of being rendered incapable to reunite under the cloak of anonymity and muted danger of death was unconceivable.

The sudden paroxysm of melancholy and fear refused to let go of her, though, and as it was mandatory in such moments, she surrendered to the soft cushions of her couch, her right arm purposely reaching for her handbag. Soon her fingers were rewarded with the smooth surface of the object of her quest, and they typed into it what would usually be sent in three different texts. _I'm in my sitting room drinking a bottle of whiskey by myself. Come with me and let's have dinner._

A series of successive sounds prevented her from further dwelling in the sorrowful emotion, the wishful turn of her lips abandoned her in favour of a frown as she straightened in a vague fight or flight response. Her new lifestyle was as far of the dangerous liaisons she'd formed back in London as one could get, putting great effort in reading people's lives off their faces, both the people she dealt with in a daily basis and those whom she caught a glimpse of in the streets as she passed by. The three rapid, solid knocks in her door were neither an acquaintance's nor a salesman's, even though both were unlikely since the clock was approaching ten in the evening.

The half empty glass abandoned in the coffee table, she got up, not quite looking at the sliver of orange light and shadow under the door but glancing in the direction of the bedroom, its sliding doors closed but providing the only acceptable escape route. Unable to measure how long it would take her to get there in case this was an ambush, she regretted her poor choice of entertainment for the evening as she edged towards safe territory, stocking-clad feet silent against a cold ground as she struggled to find that voice that once had dominated the upper spheres of London, the one she had long buried besides Louboutins, floggers and power.

The presence that loomed out of her flat beat her to it, as the second sound came and went, a female sigh she couldn't help but recognise as her own.

Her breath was caught in her throat.

She swallowed hard, once. It could still be a trap, but suddenly she was sober and lightheaded and looking through a peephole at a figure that had turned his piercing, cold steel gaze downwards, the corners of his mouth positively twisting up ever so slightly despite an evident sort of old pain framing the angles of his face.

She broke her stare away after a whole minute (_Hour? Day? Life?_), her silent watch bathed in unrestrained awe disturbed by the text alert of her own phone. The sound set Earth back to its axis, and time move forward with the vivid sounds of night down in the street, the quiet humming of old electric installations and her blood, rushing in a turbulent flow through her veins.

Only then she realised the mobile had been resting in her trembling hands all along, and a brush of fingers across its screen later, anticipation built inside her even though she'd seen what was waiting for her on the other side of the door.

_If convenient_, it read,_ open the door at once. If inconvenient, open it anyway._

Not even a heartbeat later her eyes had returned to him, something soothing washing over her as she devoured every detail of him before any other action was performed. "Irene," his deep baritone finally rumbled, muffled ever so slightly by the barrier between them, "I know you're there. Whatever direction this encounter may have had, you're ruining it by refusing to open the door. However, if I leaped into a wrong conclusion by coming here, feel free to inform me what your thoughts about my presen-"

In one swift movement, her hand grasped the door handle and yanked the door open, barely resting before gripping the lapel of an ill-fitting suit and pulling him inside aggressively. Closing the door was a different, unnecessary task altogether, and she didn't bother complying it, nor trying to pretend the intensity of her sentiment was a lesser one. Instead, with the ignored sound of her phone crashing against the floor, she pulled him down to her, sharing his shaky, stale cigarette breath for the longest of seconds before closing the distance between them with a kiss.

His lips remained unmoving for a heartbeat, then began kissing her back with a fervour that obliterated the inexperience behind it, silencing all of her doubts and worries with the parting of his mouth and the artless roaming of long fingered hands up and down her back. They separated moments later, both breathless and flushed, though she had the excuse of alcohol—the pink blush that radiated on top of his cheekbones was solely her doing, and it took every ounce of her willpower not to lock their lips together again.

In its place, she allowed her gaze to wander along the length of his body, taking in the faint lines around the edges of his eyes and the changes in his complexion due to exertion and malnourishment. Only his hair, clipped short and dyed a dirty shade of blond, as well as his clothing had suffered any significant alterations, all in all a simple though effective kind of disguise, hiding nearly in plain sight. Other people could have been fooled, but then they hadn't got a look into the deepest of this man's soul. They simply didn't know what he was really like, where to search in order to find him. And she had been deceived, too, for the most agonising moment of her life, before trusting the science of them, how their bodies and minds seemed to gravitate toward each other despite the trials of the complicated lives they led.

And so, finally laying eyes upon him conveyed more than anything else possibly could. It not only enkindled her faith in him, but in her, in _them_, in the fact that this, whatever it was, between them, was transcendental and tangible.

The sight of him, though, also roused a buried hunger, a slow grin spreading through her features as she thought of resuming the weirdest experiment of all that started one sunny morning in a flat in Belgravia, investigating the dichotomy of being dead and feeling so alive by the collision of mouths and a hands-on exploration of skin over flesh and bones.

"Dinner?"

With a muffled groan and the weight of two bodies pressed against it, the door was finally closed.


End file.
